William Slade (valet)

William Slade was President Abraham Lincoln's valet from 1861 to 1865.

Biography
William Slade was born a slave, but he later became a freedman and kept a boardinghouse in Washington DC before working as a Treasury Department messenger and as a Presbyterian elder. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln hired him as his valet, and he was active in arguing for the African-American right to vote and their right to have a say in the selection of their officers. After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Slade corresponded with Frederick Douglass about Andrew Johnson's administration.